It's nice to know that even now

[GloGirl]

We are still keeping our birthing people at the centre of our focus with clear maternity guidance from my local hospital. So we don't confuse anyone.

Giving Birth

• One birth partner is allowed when in labour. This will not change and is exempt from the general COVID 19 guidance.
• Birthing people are being discharged home from the delivery suite wherever possible and birth partners can stay with you until you go home.
• If you need to be transferred to the postnatal ward partners are not allowed to go with you.

From our local branch of Maternity Voices.

[JellySlice]

'Birthing partner' - partner who helps with the birthing.

Therefore
'Birthing people' - people who help with the birthing, ie midwives, doctors etc.

Why do they want to discharge midwives and doctors straight home from the delivery suite? It doesn't make sense.

But then not much of the trans-pandering language makes sense.

[FlockofGulls]

"Birthing people" ???

ummm, don't they mean "women"

FFS

[FlamingoAndJohn]

What about women who are struggling to read this information in their second language. This is just going to confuse them, it’s confusing enough in English.

Are there any translations of it? What does it say in other languages?

[Clymene]

Yep: digital.nhs.uk/coronavirus/shielded-patient-list

'People who are pregnant'

FFS

Birthing people makes no sense at all. Much as I love the NHS, their painful capitulation to the wokerati makes me incandescent. It puts lives at risk.

[Al1Langdownthecleghole]

It literally conjures up the mental image of my vagina performing a function first, and my human existence second.
The focus is entirely upon the bodily process, not the woman with a name, personality and life.

That reminds me a some of my old school Nursing Tutors Barracker, who had no issues handing out major bollockings for anyone careless enough to refer to the "diabetic" in bed three.

Women. Know thy place.

[PhoenixBuchanan]

Have they come up with a word to replace "maternity" yet?

I've seen them try.

I did a required online fetal wellbeing course recently (I'm a midwife) full of "birthing person" etc. The most egregious example was one of the options to a multiple choice question that referred to "fetal sleep or person sleep". I had to re-read it and initially had no clue what they were on about. Then I realised they had used "person sleep" as a stand-in for "maternal sleep".

I let rip about that one in the feedback section. Unbelievable that they would use such convoluted and non-sensical language when we know that communication issues are a huge factor in unsafe care and poor outcomes.

[PhoenixBuchanan]

One of my colleagues (we are not in the UK) uses the word "birther" in her written communication. She has a friend with a trans son and is trying so hard to be "inclusive". I pointed out that it made her clients sound like brood mares. She agreed when I pointed it out and changed it to something slightly less offensive.

[Judgybitch]

The thing is, it's perfectly possible to give put this information in a a woke way without using this bizarre phrasing.

YOU will be allowed one birth partner.

Once you have given birth YOU will be discharged etc etc.

It makes it obvious this has been specifically been targeted otherwise it wouldn't sound so batshit!

[Middleagedmidwife]

Absolute shite! Only women give birth- end of. I’ve looked after a pregnant ‘man’ once but actually the baby came out of his/her vagina in the normal way!

[JellySlice]

The word for the person being discharged home from the delivery suite has been defined in law:

mother

[Charley50]

OMFG

[ScapaFlo]

But to be inclusive of the teeny proportion of trans people affected, they exclude and disenfranchise the other 99.9% of women who use the service. It's utterly ridiculous 😡

[Dances]

Ah come on, you shower of genital fetishists, what genitals MUST a 'mother' have? Bigots.

Especially today.

[MonsterSister]

One of the interesting things about working from home is that I can hear DH during his online work meetings. He writes medical software.

'Kevin. Kevin, the fuckwits have collated this by bloody GENDER again. Can you get on to them and tell them we need them to populate the SEX field for the medical risk, and the gender field is just so they address the letter right? Thanks.'

[ScrimpshawTheSecond]

I honestly didn't twig what on earth they meant by 'birthing people'.

We're not mothers anymore?

[Oncewasblueandyellowtwo]

I just looked through the maternity voices twitter page, this was posted by someone who attended a seminar and was from someone's notes.

"We are all birthing people,connecting
Human to human*

The person who wrote it had a red drawn a red box around this to highlight it for some reason...





twitter.com/hashtag/matvoices2020?lang=en

[TreestumpsAndTrampolines]

birther

Isn't that what they called the people who wanted to see Obama's birth certificate? I know it was something to do with americans, presidents, and birth certificates...

[TheBewildernessisWeetabix]

Birthers are the Republican nuts who subscribed to Trump's claims that Obama was born in Kenya and his Hawaii birth certificate was a fake.

[TheProdigalKittensReturn]

If I came across the term "birthing people" I'd assume it meant midwife, obstetrician, nurses working on the maternity ward, etc. Those who assist with the birthing process, not the woman giving birth. Do the woke enjoy confusing people? I mean, if they all want to confuse each other on Tumblr then fill your boots etc, but really not appropriate to do so in a medical setting, especially not in the middle of a pandemic.

[JellySlice]

Do the woke enjoy confusing people?

Yes.

[ScrimpshawTheSecond]

They enjoy confusing people if they get to demonstrate how superior their made up knowledge is and do a spot of educating.

[WrathofFaeKIopp]

In preparation for in vitro pregnancies using only the minimum amount of a woman's body tissue as is possible.

Surrogacy of a future age.

[BeetrootRocks]

In and out group language is a thing.

The NHS should not be engaging with this when surely their main aim should be to get important info across as simply as possible to the massive range of people who use their services.

I'll never forget the poster on the cancer campaign thread about people with cervixes, who said essentially that if women are too uneducated to know they have a cervix that's their problem.

[BeetrootRocks]

Agree that for some pushing this language is to disconnect certain process from the people who have them, in order to make other agendas more palatable.

The USA anti abortion stuff is a good example of this, where the (very developed) foetus is always represented floating in a nothingness, as it doesn't help their aims to recognise that that it is inside a living breathing human.

[BeetrootRocks]

Their argument of just give it up for adoption, ignoring the realities and dangers of pregnancy and birth on the woman, is exactly the same vibe as the pro surrogacy crew.

So both the left and the right are singing from the same song sheet, when it comes to things that negatively impact women.